Interesting words, part 2

It was doubly unfortunate for English Catholics that in 1570 Pope Pius V issued a Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, condemning Queen Elizabeth as a heretic and absolving her subjects from their allegiance to her. The Bull had been intended to help the northern rebels, but it was not issued and advertised in England until after they had been defeated (with reckless bravery, a Catholic gentleman called John Felton tacked a copy of it to the gate of the Bishop of London’s palace, and suffered the usual hideous execution of a traitor when he was caught). It provided a new embarrassment for Catholics instead of helping them. … Pius’s action was so generally recognized as a political blunder that it was even remembered in the 1930s when the papacy considered how to react to Adolf Hitler’s regime: discreet voices in the Vatican privately recalled the bad precedent, and behind the scenes it was a factor in preventing a public papal condemnation of Nazism.